It would be
a mistake to assume that, because of this illustration, I am a Boston Red Sox
fan. Rather, as a loyal lover of the New York Mets as group reincarnation of
the old Brooklyn Dodgers, I am a rabid New York Yankees hater. And any team
that humbles and destroys them as the Red Sox did this autumn is worthy of our
admiration. And now that Pedro Martinez is coming to the Mets, he will surely,
somehow, continue his noble mission.

Following
is an excerpt from Roger Angell’s recent article in The New Yorker, included
here in order to show that baseball can inspire dramatically artistic writing.

“…The Sox
catch up – a solo Ortiz home run, and, in replica of the night before, another
Millar walk, a hit-and-run advance for the inserted Roberts, and a delivering
single – provided only brief cheer and on we went, at 4-4, past a fourth hour,
then a fifth, with close calls and botched bunts, and stranded hopes and
runners piling up among the slowly turning innings. Low on fuel, the Ameriquest
advertising blimp headed for the barn. The game’s eventualities at last brought
Wakefield on to pitch for the Sox in the twelfth. As a starting knuckleballer,
he generally paired with the second-string catcher, Doug Mirabelli, a nanny for
the wanton pitch, but removing the powerful Varitek from the line-up was not an
option here. As we know, the knuckler devises its own flight path after it
leaves the pitcher’s hand, and Sheffield, the Yankee leadoff man in the
thirteenth, struck out on a fritillary that darted away from his bat and
Varitek’s mitt as well, delivering the batter safe at first. A force-play out
put Matsui there in his place, and then, oopsie, over to second on another
Varitek embarrassment, and –yikes! – to third, on still another sailer. Smiling
wanly, the rooters saw a fresh end: the Red Sox eliminated by a butterfly.
Sierra, at bat with two on and two out, swung through the three-and-two and
missed it cleanly as Varitek, a mastiff after a song sparrow, jumped at the
ball and swallowed it clean. Not much later, the game finished on a glorious
anticlimax, a run-scoring, broken-bat bloop by the ever-up, ever-useful Ortiz.”